Helping museum goers deepen their appreciation of art

GalleryPal, 2023

Giving museum goers the tools they need to learn independently

▻ The Problem

Visitors to museums and art galleries lack simple, convenient, self-directed ways of learning about art on display. A lack of knowledge about the art prevents them from appreciating it on a deeper level, which diminishes their enjoyment of the experience of the museum or art gallery.

▻ The Solution

GalleryPal is a mobile app that helps users independently explore museums and art galleries and deepen their appreciation of art using a variety of familiar unobtrusive learning methods, including assisted reality and audio guides.

▻ My Process

GalleryPal was born of a week-long creativity sprint. I received a pre-identified problem to be solved with a mobile app, and I followed a logical design process each day, resulting in a proof-of-concept for a user-centered product that could be built.

Day 1: Understanding the needs of museum goers

▻ The Visitor Perspective

A series of interviews had already been conducted with museums and art gallery visitors. I studied the interviews and identified common themes to pinpoint major needs to address with an app.

Chief traits of visitors:

  • Enjoy art but want to appreciate it on a deeper level.

  • Need context about art to reach a deeper appreciation.

  • Are frustrated when there aren’t easy ways to get context.

  • Mostly want to explore on their own, not in a tour group.

“I like to form my own opinion about art, but it can be hard to do that when I don’t really know anything about the artist, or what their intentions were in creating the work.”

— Museum/Art Gallery Visitor

▻ The Tour Guide Perspective

There was also an existing interview with a museum tour guide about her interactions with visitors, which offered further insights into visitors’ needs:

  • Visitors need expert guidance to appreciate art.

  • Appreciating art involves forming personal connections with it.

  • Forming personal connections with art can be highly fulfilling.

“At the end of the day ... artwork is really meant to also sort of understand yourself in an interesting way.”

— Museum Tour Guide

▻ User Persona

I developed a user persona to synthesize my research insights and guide my thinking about how to meet the needs of museum and art gallery visitors.

The Budding Art Enthusiast

Junior art director in New York City

  • Enjoys visiting museums by herself.

  • Prefers newer exhibits to older ones.

  • Prefers not to research art ahead of time.

Needs a simple way of learning more about art on her own while in a museum so that she makes the most of her visit

Day 2: Generating ideas

▻ Competitive Analysis

I wanted to know what sorts of apps already existed that museum and art gallery visitors might use. This would help me identify existing patterns worth adapting for my app, as well as room for improvement. I found three major types of apps and studied a popular example of each.

National Gallery of Art

Museum Map App

  • Facilitates exploration by orienting users in the building.

  • Describes rooms and major works of art.

  • Offers a list of “must see” art.

  • Offers text and audio descriptions of art.

Smartify

Art Identification App

  • Accesses the user’s camera to identify art.

  • Offers interactive explorations of art.

  • Offers a shop with items related to art.

Daily Art

Art Learning App

  • Offers interactive explorations of art.

  • Links to related or recommended art.

  • Links to further reading related to art.

  • Allows users to curate lists of favorite art.

▻ Crazy Eights

I used the “crazy eights” technique to brainstorm eight very different ways to help the user persona meet her goals. My sketches ranged from a practical, if dull, solution inspired by Wikipedia to a more fanciful one inspired by the augmented-reality game Pokémon GO.

Day 3: Deciding on a design direction

▻ Storyboards

The solutions I’d generated varied widely in terms of creativity and practicality. I wanted to make an app that was engaging but could also readily be turned into a reality. I picked the solution that seemed most balanced and began sketching the major screens the user persona would have to navigate.

▻ Moodboard

I knew roughly how the screens of my app would be organized, but I didn’t know what they’d look like in terms of colors, typography, etc. I gathered imagery reflecting key ideas that the app should convey:

  • Self-directed enrichment

  • Self-reliance

  • Discovery

  • Friendly guidance

Imagery suggested pleasant, muted colors and simple, unobtrusive visuals that wouldn’t overpower or compete with the art that the user was appreciating.

Day 4: Building a prototype

▻ Key Screens

I turned my storyboards into rough designs in Figma and brought them to life with the colors and imagery I’d established through the moodboard. Then I knit the screens together with interactions to make a clickable prototype for testing on potential users and gathering feedback.

Map

A map of the museum/gallery, serving as a home screen

Features:

  1. Building/floor selector

  2. Search box

  3. Buttons that reveal details and directions

  4. “Locate me” button that centers the user’s location

Must See

A list of popular works of art in the museum/gallery

Features:

  1. Building/floor selector that shows art by location

  2. Search box

  3. Buttons that open the map and show directions

Examine

An augmented-reality camera feed highlighting art directly in front of the user

Features

  1. Transparent header with basic details

  2. Transparent dialogue box with text

  3. Colored outlines to focus attention

  4. “Add to favorites” button

  5. “Audio guide” button

Favorites

A list of works of art selected by the user to revisit later

Features

  1. Building/floor selector that shows favorited art according to location

  2. Search box

  3. Buttons that expand sections to reveal a location button and links to literature and merchandise

Day 5: Gathering feedback from users

▻ Usability Tests

I had a prototype for what seemed like a viable product, but would actual users appreciate it and find it intuitive to navigate? I recruited five people on whom to test the prototype. Some identified as veteran visitors of museums and art galleries, while others did not.

I gave all of the test subjects the same scenario, asking them to imagine entering a museum that they’d never visited before, and a set of prompts such as “You really like a piece of art and want to remember it later. What might you do with the app to facilitate that?”

Findings:

  • Participants successfully and smoothly completed all prompts, validating the design.

  • Participants appreciated how the app facilitated access to information, and they wanted even more access.

  • Participants appreciated how they could curate a list of favorite works of art, and they wanted additional ways of customizing the app.

I now had validation of the design. This was indeed an app that would benefit actual museum and art gallery visitors. And I also had feedback that would help me to refine the app if I decided to develop it further into a marketable product.

“Being able to have a guide like this in your own hands ups accessibility.”

— Test Subject

Prototype

Insights

▻ A clear process is essential.

Particularly during a creativity sprint, a designer may feel pressured to show off their creativity at the expense of practicality or, fixating on the time crunch, simply default to whatever patterns come to mind first. Mapping out a design process keeps the designer focused on user needs.

▻ The app itself isn’t the user’s goal.

It’s tempting to give an app an exciting aesthetic, especially when the app is related to art. But the point of most apps is to facilitate action in the real world. An app should give users what they need quickly, then let them go back to doing what they actually wanted to do in the first place.

▻ Familiar patterns help users.

For an app that’s meant to facilitate action in the real world, it’s important not to force users to learn new patterns unless it’s truly necessary. Incorporating existing patterns into a design can help users pick up an app and start using it straightaway, feeling comfortable and confident.